. >> at yesterday's white house meeting, president obama did not offer negotiators anything new. he just tried to sell them on the same plan he outlined last friday, being called plan c. since the president's plan a and speaker boehner's plan b both failed to gain traction. plan c would extend middle class tax rates and we're told the senate wants to tweak exactly who counts as being in the middle class. maybe even raising the income threshold and the white house is apparently willing to go as high as 4 or $500,000 a year. plan c would expand unemployment benefits for the 2 million people set to lose them at the end of this year. it would include a small amount of spending cuts but would not touch entitlements like medicare and not deal with the debt limit right now. >> i am modestly optimistic that an agreement can be achieved. nobody is going to get 100% of what they want. but let's make sure that middle class families and the american economy and in fact the world economy are aren't adversely affected because people can't do their jobs. >> and today lawmakers are in staff leve